Our projects

Each project is an area of law or subject matter that the Law Commission has agreed to review. The Commission works on several projects at a time. Together, these projects make up the Commission's annual work programme.

Use the search filters below to find particular projects. For more information on how we work see how we conduct projects.

In 2011, the Law Commission was asked to review the use of pecuniary penalties as a regulatory tool. These are financial penalties that policymakers are increasingly opting to use in place of criminal sanctions, to punish and deter misconduct in...

In October 1997 the Law Commission started a new project on the subject of international trade with the project’s first report, Electronic Commerce Part One: A Guide for the Legal and Business Community (NZLC R50) released a year later. This is...

For this project, the Commission reviews the Trustee Act 1956 and trust law generally. In the first stage of this review, the Report, Review of the Law of Trusts: A Trusts Act for New Zealand (R130) is preceded by six Issues Papers. The...

For this project, the Commission reviews existing rules of evidence around admissibility of previous convictions, similar offending and bad character. In particular, the extent to which the court is made aware of prior convictions of an accused,...

This project reviews existing rules providing access to Court records and developing principles to govern access to Court records, the retention and archiving of records. It considers the appropriateness of a single code providing rules for all...

The purpose of this project is to review the legal framework for adoption in New Zealand as set out in the Adoption Act 1955 and the Adult Adoption Information Act 1985, and to recommend whether and how the framework should be modified to better...

This project examines and reviews that part of the Accident Compensation Act 1982 which recognises and is intended to promote the general principles of community responsibility, comprehensive entitlement, complete rehabilitation, real...

This project considers the rules in Bain v Fothergill and Joyner v Weeks. The Commission concludes that the rules established in the two cases were unjustified and contrary to principle. It proposes that they be abolished by...

The Report for this project is the third arising from the Law Commission’s review of aspects of damages. In 1991, the Commission reported on Employment Contracts and the Rule in Addis v Gramophone Co (R18, 1991), and on The Rules in ...